George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This morning's announcement of a negotiated tax rate of 15 per cent for backpackers is good news and brings certainty to farming communities. The 15 per cent rate is a good outcome for farmers, backpackers and Aussie workers. I have always supported a rate of between 15 and 19 per cent because that is what farmers in my electorate told me what was needed. The Bowen Gumlu Growers Association in North Queensland proposed a rate of 15 percent, but I know farmers generally accepted our position of 19 per cent originally.

Aside from that position, it is important to find the right balance between competing interests on this issue—that is, the interests of foreign workers and their willingness to work on Aussie farms against the competing interests of Aussie workers who work alongside them. Aussie workers doing the same job on the same farm should not take home less pay than foreign workers who work alongside them. It would be grossly unfair for an Aussie worker to pay tax while a foreign worker paid none at all.

Farmers did not come to me saying that the tax rate should be zero. Even backpackers accept they should pay some tax. So it is perplexing to see Labor even today still saying they are happy with foreign workers paying zero tax. Labor never has and never will represent the farmers. Labor long ago gave up on representing Aussie workers. The only people Labor is representing on this issue is foreign workers and their own political self-interests.

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